"Save new login" appears to do nothing, but actually, does nothing
I've spent half an hour searching the forum comments, looking for information on why the "Save new login" menu item in my 1Password browser extension appears to do nothing. I've found questions and comments expressing confusion and frustration, going back at least two years, documenting that when this command appears to do nothing, it actually does nothing. You can add my comment to the list of customers frustrated by this bad behavior. I also found this comment from a team member:
"I know how frustrating it is when software doesn't work the way you thought it would.
... but right now we believe this behaviour of 1Password is correct."
I think you are wrong. You apparently have no idea how frustrating this is to users, in spite of multiple message threads which attempt to communicate our frustration to you.
You are also wrong about what correct behavio(u)r would be, in this case. It is never good interface design, to have a menu choice or command do absolutely nothing, and give no feedback for the user. If a command fails, and gives no feedback, the user is completely at sea, as to how to respond, how to proceed, or what the problem is. All the worse, when the user knows they have a problem- they can't achieve what they want to achieve- and the programmers think it isn't a problem worth correcting, even after they have been informed of it, multiple times.
To add to the problem, all of the documentation ignores the possibility that this problem could exist, stating things like:
"4. Click the gear icon (or choose “Settings” on Windows) and select “Save new Login” from the menu.
- Give your Login item a unique name. When you’re finished, click Save Login."
I didn't find any instance of documentation which explains when or why the "Save new login" action might result in total non-action, nor what to do when the action fails. There are no instructions on how to proceed at that point. The documentation does not explain how a customer could achieve the goal we are trying to achieve, when the "Save new login" fails to work. The answers that I have found from the team, after significant search time on the forum, amount to telling us "don't do that". You would save your users lots of time and frustration, if 1Password provided feedback within the program, at the time of the use, whenever a command is not executed. But more importantly, if we are trying to solve a problem with your software, then the answer we need is NOT "don't do that", but rather, "here is how you can attain your goal".
Ironically, the full 1Password (that is, not the mini or browser versions) handles the request to "Save new login" exactly as I, and other customers have requested. It does something. It opens a New Login window, with the chance for me to fill in the information that I want to include in it. In spite of a team member's assertion, that the 1Password browser extension "would need to do some magic to work" in the way customers have been requesting, full 1Password has no trouble doing just what we are asking for, or at least making it clear that it is ready to do something, giving us full control over a useful set of options, which the user can accept or decline.
I'm ready to guarantee that when a customer chooses "Save new login" in the browser extension or 1Password mini, they are trying to save something. Maybe a new login, or maybe new information, that relates to the task they are working on. 1Password should help them attain their goal, rather than fail, with no feedback. And rather than offer the feedback that this command cannot be executed, 1Password mini or the browser extension should, at a minimum, respond as the full 1Password does, by opening a window that is ready to accept data from the user. Better still would be to offer within the menus on both the browser extension and mini, the "New item" option and sub-options that are available within the full 1Password.
If I visit a webpage using the browser extension, and need to save additional information of any kind, it's absurd that I have to launch the full 1Password, in order to find a way to enter that data. It's absurd that I have to figure out for myself, or by reading page after page of Forum discussions, that the browser extension failed, why it failed, and that the solution is to launch the full 1Password. I should be able to save a new login, note, credit card, or any of the other "New..." options available in the full 1Password menu, without having to leave the browser extension or mini window.
No doubt it is frustrating to the team to receive angry messages and complaints like this one from customers. I regret adding negativity to the discussion. I would rather be writing more relaxed and positive comments. That would be more likely to happen, if requests weren't ignored for years, and if team members didn't suggest that it would take "magic" to create functionality, which in fact, you already offer within the full 1Password.
1Password Version: 6.6.4
Extension Version: 4.6.3
OS Version: 10.11.6
Sync Type: Dropbox
Comments
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Hey @Nekoninda,
I want to thank you for writing to us about your experience, it is really great to hear honest and thoughtful feedback like this. I'm very sorry about the frustration you feel though and I fully take your point that if there is no login form on a web page that clicking the 1Password browser button > Settings > "Save New Login" will result in no action at all and no feedback to the user. 1Password can do better here and your point here about having no feedback to the user is completely valid.
As you pointed out the main 1Password app does allow you to easily create a new Login item via the menubar (File > New Item... > Login - or - File > New Login) and using the
+button at the bottom of the app. However the 1Password Mini works differently (we affectionately call the popup that appears when you click the 1Password browser button "1Password Mini"). The difference is because 1Password Mini is aware of the website you're viewing whereas the main 1Password app is not.With that difference in mind, this means that the "Save New Login" menu item in the 1Password Mini tries to create a new Login item based on the current website context. As Greg mentioned in the post you quoted from, if there is no login web form of the web page you're viewing then clicking "Save New Login" won't do anything because in the current context there is nothing to save.
Getting back to the start of my post, I agree with you that 1Password could do better here and instead let the user know what happened or point them to some helpful information about how that Save New Login feature in 1Password Mini is intended to be used.
We will certainly take you point on board and I wish to once again thank you for taking time to let us know about this. Your suggestions are warmly welcomed.
I hope that helps. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
Best regards,
Matthew0 -
Thank you, @matthew_ag, for your thoughtful and detailed response. Thanks, too, for indicating that 1Password Mini is the active program, whether I access it from the Apple menu bar icon or the icon in a browser. I was trying to make a distinction based on my actions as a user, noting that 1Password Mini is running and available, even if I have no browser open, whereas the icon in a browser only appears if I have installed the browser extension for that specific browser. If I understand your message, there is no important distinction to the underlying programming.
I appreciate your willingness to take this issue to the team, and I hope they will recognize that helping users reach their goals for saving information in 1Password is more important than formalisms like "you weren't in the right place, when you issued this command", or "we didn't think of this action, so you aren't allowed to do it (even though many of you have requested it). In particular, I hope the team will ponder the idea expressed in your third paragraph, and in older messages on this topic, that because 1Password Mini knows more about a current web page than the full 1Password, it must do less, and be less useful to the user. That's an interesting twist on arguing for one's limitations. I don't accept 1Password Mini's response to the users, that "I know too much to help you". As I said before, I think it would be a big step forward if the menu for 1Password Mini were to offer the full range of options that the full 1Password gives for saving new logins, passwords, credit card numbers, notes, and whatever other data a user might have decided that they want to store at that moment.
I would have no complaint, if 1Password Mini offered all of these options, along with a warning message or clarification. Something like, "The current webpage contains no login web form. If you select any of the following options from the "New" menu, you will need to enter all the relevant data."
I want to reiterate that 1Password should help me store that data that I want it to remember, whenever and however I am inspired to store that data. For example, if I am making a purchase on Amazon, and that reminds me that I need to store a new credit card number in whatever other 1Password logins or locations that I have chosen, 1Password should help me get the data into my chosen location, rather than setting up roadblocks to insist that I limit my actions to those linked at that moment to Amazon.
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Hey @Nekoninda,
Thanks, too, for indicating that 1Password Mini is the active program, whether I access it from the Apple menu bar icon or the icon in a browser. I was trying to make a distinction based on my actions as a user, noting that 1Password Mini is running and available, even if I have no browser open, whereas the icon in a browser only appears if I have installed the browser extension for that specific browser. If I understand your message, there is no important distinction to the underlying programming
Correct, clicking the 1Password icon in either the Apple menubar while the browser is active or the 1Password browser button in the browser itself will allow you to use the "Save New Login" feature. The act of clicking 1Password extension browser button actually just sends a message from the browser to the 1Password app telling it to display the 1Password Mini. So as you say the underlying programming is the same.
In particular, I hope the team will ponder the idea expressed in your third paragraph, and in older messages on this topic, that because 1Password Mini knows more about a current web page than the full 1Password, it must do less, and be less useful to the user.
I don't believe it was the intent for 1Password Mini to be less useful - it is likely that adding support for creating credit card and identity items via the 1Password Mini wasn't added simply because it wasn't thought of as something that would be needed. For most users they'll only need to create a single Identity item and a few Credit Card items. Since those are one-time operations, adding an option to the 1Password Mini may not provide much value.
Don't get me wrong though, functionality like this may come to 1Password Mini in the future and we may see it gain the ability to create a Credit Card or Identity item but I don't know of any plans to do this at the moment.
I want to reiterate that 1Password should help me store that data that I want it to remember, whenever and however I am inspired to store that data.
That is very well put - adding the ability to automatically save Credit Card and Identity items is a wonderful idea and I would love if 1Password could do that. However as developers we only have so much time and need to spend that time wisely where the work we do will benefit the most users. Thinking about it that way has always pointed us to improving our Login, Credit Card and Identity filling process and our Login saving process. We have a ways to go here and there are a lot of issues for us to focus on that customers write into us about every day.
We could choose to develop a Credit Card and Identity item saving mechanism we would delight a few customers such as yourself but then we would fall behind on fixing Login filling and saving problems which would affect a lot more users. Such is life, we can't please everyone. However we highly appreciate your comments and suggestions. They are very insightful and show a true passion for design and function.
I hope you can understand our stance on this and as always we welcome your feedback and further insights on 1Password.
Best regards,
Matthew0 -
It sounds like we have similar views, excepting on the priority of change. I can't make a judgement on that, except to note that the team has been responding to complaints about this from different users for some time. I used a credit card as an example, because is another option in the full 1Password menu, but in fact, this wasn't the need that my wife had, when she was recently frustrated by the failure of the "Save new login" menu option. Nor was it what I was trying to save, when I got frustrated with this problem several months ago. For both my wife and I, we wanted to save a short text string that we would need the next time we visited the website. This text string wasn't a password for a login page, but rather a twenty or so character string, that needs to be typed into a field on a page that comes up after logging into the website. In my wife's case, she wants to store the names of a few prescription medicines with very long names, which she prescribes repeatedly on her telemedicine site.
And as I said, it's not just us. Searching the forum, I found half a dozen other users who complained about this problem. I don't know what they were trying to do, when they found that "Save new login" didn't work, but I have faith that they had a good reason for trying to save some important piece of data at that moment.
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@Nekoninda: In the vast (really, vast) majority of cases, issues with saving logins are pretty straightforward from a user perspective: there's a login form but 1Password isn't able to detect it for some reason, so we need to find ways of improving it. I hear you that it could be useful to have some more feedback that it's failing in these cases, but just as some folks find it infuriating to have none at all, there's a fine line there and it's easy to really annoy people with notifications, etc.
But you're right that this isn't the first time the things you're talking about have come up. Just keep in mind that we're having this discussion in the "browser filling" category of the forums, which is populated almost exclusively with requests from customers for help with login issues. As Matthew mentioned, we really need to focus on the areas where we can do the most good for the greatest number of people, and for now, with regard to browser integration, that's login filling. After all, in most cases you only save once, so you're ultimately going to get the most mileage out of improvements we make to filling, even if you'd like 1Password's saving to be more flexible.
And it's important to keep in mind that "Save Login" is designed to, well...save login credentials, and it sounds like that's really not what you were trying to use it for. It simply wasn't built to be a generic "Save" feature for just anything you find/enter on a website, and the name reflects that. I understand there's a desire and a use case for the sort of thing you're trying to do, but this just isn't a feature 1Password has currently. That said, while we don't have plans right now to support saving/filling just any kind of data, as our focus is on logins, it may be that we can invest in that kind of thing in the future. We're constantly evaluating what we need to prioritize, and that will continue to change over time from the work we do and the feedback we get from users. Thanks so much for letting us know a little bit about what you were trying to use 1Password for, and how you'd like to be able to use it in the future. Cheers! :)
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Thanks, Brenty. I am getting greater clarity, that I should expect no improvement in this situation. If and when improvement comes, I and other users who have found this to be a problem will have an unexpected opportunity to be pleasantly surprised. You point out that "Save new login" is supposed to save a new login, and not do something else. I agree, but since it is the only option currently in the 1Password Mini menu to save anything new, I think it's tunnel vision to end consideration there. When your customer has fallen overboard, and is thrashing around in the water, is it better to toss them a life ring? Or a pound of iron, with the explanation, that life rings were never considered or prioritized for this situation?
Clarity is good, and since I have not provided you with any arguments that you consider valid or convincing, it is time for me to move on. I am curious about how many of your customers would say that they prefer to get no feedback whatsoever, when a command, which they have explicitly invoked and attempted to execute, fails to function, for no apparent reason. I don't know users like that.
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@Nekoninda: No argument necessary. We're just saying "This is how 1Password works today. Here's why. We'll consider your suggestions for the future." I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. :blush:
P.S: I'm a cat person too. :crazy:
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I would just like to comment that this post by @Nekoninda encapsulates everything I feel. I have used Save New Password multiple times from 1P Mini when it failed to identify the site/password on it's own, hoping to be able to jumpstart the process of adding my new password to 1P. Each time it did nothing, i thought, "shit, it's broken... how am I doing something wrong?"
Then I begrudgingly open the full app and add it and think, "this can't be right. I have to be doing something incorrect."
Today I finally got fed up enough to search why it wasn't working. And Google Autocomplete suggested my search term for me, "1Password Save New Login not working" as soon as I started typing it. So I knew I wasn't alone.
One thing I would add to this conversation is that I politely disagree with @brenty in the assumption that the majority of users only save a credit card or a password once and that, therefor, it's not important to make those features more manageable.
I've been a 1P user for years. Looking back, my receipt is dated November 5, 2007. So, 10 years.
During that time, I've had to resave credit cards, notes, passwords, change things, and manually manipulate a gross amount of information. The things that we're talking about are not edge cases, but normal occurrences when you've completely committed to the platform. And every day I add more to 1Password. These cases get more frequent.
I think there is more to be said about never letting a user feel like the application is broken. When I choose a command, and nothing happens, it makes me feel like I can't trust the app. And this is not an application I can feel is untrustworthy. This application demands that we trust it completely.
Also, it seems reasonable to merely get a response, "1Password Mini was unable to save a new login. Would you like to open the full 1Password App?"
That would at least show respect to the user, their expectation, and facilitate the next step. Which would also inform me that things aren't broken, but that I'm asking it to do something it's not able to do... and rather than leave me hanging, it executes the simple task of ushering me to the full app that can help me.
I hope you reconsider your stance.
Jason
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@jasonglaspey: I don't see where I mentioned credit cards, but I see your point. 1Password has never supported saving items other than Logins within the browser, but it's a feature we can consider adding in a future version. The primary function of 1Password, though, is as a password manager, so our focus is on saving and filling logins; and given the net is vast and infinite, improving those functions takes up the majority of our time and effort in this area. It's not that no one would find it useful to save Identity or Credit Card information using the browser extension, only that there are other things we can work on that will benefit more people.
You mentioned having to re-save credit card information, etc., and I'm not clear on the context there. If something is breaking for you, please let us know in a separate discussion so we can investigate.
I also wanted to highlight this:
Also, it seems reasonable to merely get a response, "1Password Mini was unable to save a new login. Would you like to open the full 1Password App?"
When you describe it that way, maybe something like a notification that macOS shows briefly and disappears would be helpful. That feels less intrusive. Something to consider.
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I wasn't intending to highlight credit cards or any other item, but more support previous comments that 1P does more than just passwords, and to assume that everything else is a nominal use case is incorrect. Sure, those other things are outside of "passwords" - but they're also the reason I use 1Password to begin with. My browser already saves passwords and iCloud can sync them. I use 1Password because it's a complete solution to managing and saving information, passwords, identities, credit cards, etc, and keeps them convenient at any point from the app or browser.
But that's not really the point of this thread.
The point of all of this is that 1Password Mini seems to be purposefully limited in its scope. I can respect and accept that decision, even if I wish it were different.
However, I'm still in shock that you seem to be so worried about the intrusiveness of a notification. I'm not sure why you seem to stress finding a less intrusive way to notify the user of something. If I, as a user, initiate a command, and nothing happens, I'm pretty surprised. I really can't think of any other tool I use that just gives zero feedback when a command isn't accomplished. And I'm totally ok with a very intrusive explanation. I went out of my way to do something, and the app isn't able to do it. That's a pretty important moment for feedback. As a user, I don't want it to be less intrusive, I want it to 100% completely inform me of two things. 1. That the expected action didn't happen. And 2: why it didn't happen. (ie. is it broken, was there an error, or simply in this case, that's not how it's supposed to be used...)
I encourage you to reconsider the importance of communicating with the audience when 1password is unable or incapable of completing a task that a user has initiated. Again, this isn't me wondering why Word didn't bold a sentence... this is my wondering 'is my password saved? do i need to do more? am i safe to move on and forget this password or what?" this is a critical moment for 1password to relieve my concerns and communicate clearly exactly what has happened.
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It's no surprise that I support Jasonglaspey and his comments. I'll add a third item to his list of what should happen when a command fails (implicit in his first message):
1. Tell me that the command failed.
2. Tell me why it failed.
3. Tell me how to accomplish what I was trying to accomplish when the command failed.Like Jasonglaspey, I am baffled by Brenty's concern about keeping information about the failure of a command THAT I INVOKED as unobtrusive as possible. I will also reinforce jasonglaspey's point, that this is not an edge case. Everything that 1Password does is important to those of us who use it. It matters to me to be able to use 1Password's capabilities in ways that are efficient to me, and I don't want to have to remember to say "Mother May I?" or figure out the secret handshake, in order to get a standard 1Password menu command to function.
But even in the most narrow interpretation of "Save new login", that is, saving a login and password, the command within 1Password Mini fails often enough to be a significant user interface concern. It fails whenever 1Password mini doesn't like something or recognize something about the page that my browser is on. Perhaps I am on a Chase Bank webpage or a Southwest Airlines webpage or any of dozens of other webpages, and something doesn't work. I recognize the problem. I want to fix it. In most cases, I've already logged into this site many times, and now the site has changed, and 1Password no longer works. Or maybe I have gotten past the first login page, and there is now some additional data that needs to be entered, and therefore remembered for my next login. Often, I believe that I know what to do to solve the problem. But 1Password mini refuses to help me. It refuses to give me easy access to the data that I have already entered into 1Password for this web site. 1Password Mini says nothing, it just fails to allow my attempts to compensate for deficiencies and problems in the webpage. I either have to write to 1Password support, to see if they can provide a fix, search for a web page on the same site that 1Password can work with, or remember that launching the full 1Password app, and repeating the "Save new login" command there, might allow me to solve my problem now.
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Thanks for all the feedback, folks. It's obvious that this is a topic of great passion for you all. It may sound cliche, but we really do appreciate passionate users like you bringing these kinds of things to our attention. For more than a decade, it's been this kind of passion that has helped us drive 1Password forward to be the best it can be. Sincerely, thanks!
I think the main confusion is that Save New Login only appears when 1Password shows in the context of a connected browser with the extension. For instance, if you click away from your browser to Finder or another app, this menu item isn't even present. Perhaps it would be better labeled "Save current page from [BROWSER]" so that it's clear that this is a browser-centered action and not simply an affordance to the same arbitrary Login creation process that is in the full application. I'm not 100% sure this is the best way forward and I can't make any promises that the 1Password interface will change in any particular way, but it's definitely food for thought.
Thanks again! Let us know if you have any other feedback, questions, or concerns.
--
Jamie Phelps
Code Wrangler @ AgileBits
Fort Worth, Texas0
